m

“What do you want?” you ask, standing in the threshold of your apartment. Leon stares back at you, a single eyebrow cocked. His hair falls in golden strands that frame his face, a few pieces tucked behind his ears.

“The pleasure of your company, obviously,” he says, words coated in a playful venom he reserves just for you. You roll your eyes, stepping out of the way so he can enter. He does, and immediately heads to your kitchen, where he roots around for whatever scraps you may have left behind.

You follow him, watching as he inspects a tupperware full of lasagna from when your mother visited a few days ago.

“Is this edible?” he asks, holding it up and pinning you with a look. You scowl.

“Yes, asshole,” you say, marching up to him and snatching it out of his hand. “And it’s mine. You can’t just barge in here and steal my food,”

You return it to its home in the fridge as he says, “You let me in?”

“Under the impression that you’d maybe fix the faucet like you said you would a week ago,” you say, words gummed up by your annoyance.

“Is that all I am to you?” he asks, pressing a palm to his chest. “A handyman? I’m wounded,”

You roll your eyes. Leon has a way of sparking your irritation. Your friends say that you bicker like an old married couple, or maybe siblings, but you think you argue because he’s a nuisance and you’re always right. The sight of him is enough to make you itch with frustration. Sometimes, you want to kick him out for good.

“Fix the damn faucet, and you’ll be on my good side again,” you say. “There’s sandwich stuff in there. Have one,”

He groans dramatically, head thrown back, but gathers the supplies for a sandwich. You watch as he prepares his meal. You’re not sure why he indulges your arguments and jabs. You’re not nice to him, never have been, but he still comes around all the same. In some part of your brain, you think it’s because you’re constant and consistent. Maybe he needs that in his life.

“Do anything fun today?” he asks, pulling a butter knife from a drawer. “I am dying to know,”

You scoff. “Unless you count telling a guy his bank account is empty as fun, no I didn’t,”

He shrugs, handing half of his sandwich to you. “I bet the look on his face was priceless,”

Around a bite of a quite good sandwich–not that you’d ever tell him that–you say, “You’d think I told him I killed his wife,”

Leon scoffs, cheeks puffed with his own bite of sandwich.

You think in another life, you could’ve loved him. Being with him is easy enough; you always know what to expect. He’ll show up randomly, not say where he’s been, eat some of your food, clean up his mess, and crash on your couch. You like him this way, always bathed in the glow of the overhead light from the stove. His hair shines golden from the yellowing bulb, catching just right to shimmer. His cheeks are just barely rosy, just enough to make you think he’s blushing. He’s beautiful in this way.

“You’re looking at me like I’ve suddenly gotten very ugly,” he says, interrupting your thoughts. You grin.

“You’re always ugly,” you fire back, handing your uneaten crust to him, which he devours. “And I wasn’t looking. I was thinking about how much I want you to leave,”

You never want him to leave. You never want him to escape you, even though he always does. He’s like a ghost, you think. You swear he was here, just here, but you can’t seem to find him. He leaves evidence behind; an old wrapper, a strand of hair, a lone shirt. You try to piece them together, a feeble attempt at unravelling who he is. You’re never successful. One clue leads to a hundred other questions.

“You’re mean, you know that?” Leon says, pushing around you to claim a spot on your couch. You smile.

“You like me this way,” you return, spinning to follow him out of the kitchen.

He spreads out on the couch, taking up most of his half. His legs straighten in front of him. He reminds you of an old cat when he does this. He stretches out like he’s just been laying in the sun, bathing himself in its light and warming his bones. He lets out a sigh that comes from somewhere deep within him. His hands come up to rest behind his head, elbows bent as he gives in to his own exhaustion.

“Do I get to ask?” you test, moving to join him on the couch. You each have your own side of the loveseat.

He shakes his head. “You know how it is,”

You do. The number one rule of being around Leon: don’t ask questions. Half the time, you don’t mind so much. If what he does requires secrecy, you’re not sure you even want to know. Sometimes though, when you can see it wearing down on him, crushing his bones beneath the weight, you want to ask, if only to help alleviate some of that gravity. But he never indulges you, never lets you in. You’ve learned to accept that. Leon is complicated. He wears his heart on his sleeve, but doesn’t let anyone see it. You’re not sure how he manages. You can see a certain darkness behind his eyes, and you’re almost positive you’re the only one he allows to see it. You know you get more of him than anyone else does, but sometimes that still doesn’t feel like enough.

“Should I get you a pillow?” you ask, jabbing his side. He slaps your hand away. “Or will you be abandoning me again?”

He snorts. “Probably the latter,”

You try not to frown. Recently, it feels like he’s been avoiding you. He shows up, irritates you, and then usually leaves. You used to wonder if he even had a place of his own, given how often he slept on your couch. But now, he’s gone more often than he’s here.

“One of these days, I’m not even going to let you in,” you say, raising an eyebrow at him. He blinks at you.

“Don’t lie to me,” he says, huffing a breath. “You’re not any good at it, anyway,”

Your mouth settles into a hard line. He takes your moment of silence to breathe, in and out, in that slow, old man way that he does. You wonder what kind of hardship has washed down his back to make him relish these moments in your presence. 

You’d be lying if you claimed to think Leon was bad to look at. He’s definitely easy on the eyes, that’s for sure. The setting sun peeks through the window, catching over the slopes of his face in the most gentle way, casting shadows along the side facing you. His lashes are naturally long, brushing along the tops of his high cheekbones each time they flutter. His skin is impossibly smooth. His lips are full, and you’ve found yourself–on several occasions–wondering if they’re as soft as they look. You’ve thought about him more than you’d like to admit, more than you’re willing to admit.

As if he can sense your wandering stare, he peeks an eye open to look at you. Heat rushes to your cheeks, and you hope that his focus is too blurry to notice. 

“That’s the second time I’ve caught you staring,” he says, voice smooth and low enough to send a shiver down your spine. “Careful. I might start to think you’ve gone soft on me,”

You scoff, mostly to hide your own embarrassment, and say, “Right, like that could ever happen,”

You think, for a fraction of a second, that it could. Half the time, your friends can’t be convinced that you aren’t at least sleeping together. It’s not like that with Leon, you always say, a creeping sense of denial coating the words. You’re not sure what it is and isn’t like with Leon, all you know that he is. He exists around you from time to time, and you can’t help it if you think about his hands on your waist and his lips on your jaw as you stare at the ceiling, willing yourself to sleep. He lives in a dark corner of your mind, one that only seems to come forward during the wee hours of the morning.

“Again, with the lying,” he chides, reaching over to poke your ribs. You swat his hand away. “C’mon now, sweetheart, you’re better than this,”

Sweetheart. The way he says it–so naturally, like the word was made for you–coats your nerves in a syrupy sweet honey that seeps so deep into your muscles you wonder how it wasn’t part of you all along. He catches the word a second too late, eyes widening as if he can see it hanging in the space between you. He hadn’t meant for it to slip, you can tell. You can’t help but be giddy that he did. Your stomach might churn itself to dust if he stares at you any longer.

To ease the tension, you say, “Have to keep you on your toes somehow,”

He huffs a laugh between shining teeth. “Now I have to play lie detector when I see you?”

“Whatever keeps you occupied,” you say with a shrug.

He doesn’t get up to leave for another half hour. You spend the time making small talk, anything to lighten the mood, but his voice echoes in your brain. Sweetheart. The word bounces off each wall in your mind, tightening your chest with each bump. You follow Leon to the door, watching as he carefully puts on his shoes and shrugs on his jacket. The muscles in his back contort as he does, making you feel twitchy. Lord above, you need a shower. That would clear your head.

“You’re looking at me like you’re expecting a goodbye kiss,” Leon jokes. The statement–in hindsight–feels like he’s testing the waters.

You smile. “And if I am?”

He’s towering over you in an instant. You’ve never been this close to him before, never had the pleasure of seeing his lopsided grin in just your peripheral. He’s a hair’s width away, breath wafting over you and curling around your neck like a noose. You hear your heart hammer in your ears.

“If I kissed you now,” he says, grin widening to split his face in two. “I would never be able to stop. And I have a plane to catch,”

“Catch it later,” you say, voice shaky with faux confidence. You’re being bold, far bolder than either of you are used to.

Leon chuckles at this, a warm noise that resonates in your chest. He leans down to press a feather light, ghostly kiss to your jaw. Your breath hitches in your throat. With that, he’s gone. You blink rapidly, shuddering a breath and trying to decipher what the hell that was.

You decide, over the next few days, that when Leon returns, you won’t mention what happened. You don’t know what possessed you, what made you act like that. Neither of you have ever expressed interest in changing the dynamics of your relationship, but you know that you, at least, have thought about it. One time, you managed to convince Leon to come out with you. He met your friends, mingled seamlessly, like he was supposed to have been there all along. After, your friends had fawned over him. You knew he was handsome, that was something even a blind man couldn’t deny. But they treated him like a god. They had asked about him constantly, wondering when you were finally going to hook up. You always denied these claims, saying that what you and Leon had was different. And it was different. You would never cross that boundary, not when everything about him seemed so carefully crafted and vulnerable, so fragile.

But, cast in the harsh lighting of the hallway, he had looked different. He looked fresh, new. He looked like someone you desperately wanted to love. You wonder why you’d never let yourself see him like that before.

He returns to you almost a week later, looking worse for wear. There’s a bruise blooming along his jaw, a new cut that severs his brow in half, and a smattering of small cuts on his cheekbone. You frown when you see him, hair nearly soaked from the rain outside. It glistens on the shoulders of his jacket.

“People will think I abuse you if you keep showing up like this,” you say. The statement manages to curl the corners of his mouth upwards.

“You do abuse me,” he says. “What happened to ‘hello, how are you’?”

You roll your eyes, stepping out of the way so he can enter.

“I’m in the middle of making dinner, so perfect timing,” you holler after him as he makes his way into your apartment.

“Why do you think I’m here?” he returns. You can hear the smile in his voice. “I thought I smelled fire, figured the place would be ash by the time I showed up,”

“Very funny,” you say, shoving past him to enter your kitchen. “I can cook, you know. The chicken is an outlier and shouldn’t be counted,”

Leon laughs, a bright sound that contradicts the state of him. “You’re right, my bad,”

You return to your soup on the stovetop, watching a few bubbles pop. The broth is more watery than you intended, but that doesn’t mean it will taste bad. Leon is just mean. You feel him approach, leaning over your shoulder to see what you’re making. His closeness makes your muscles tense, almost in anticipation. You swallow thickly.

“If you’re going to be in my way, the least you could do is help,” you say, turning slightly to peer at him. He’s much closer than you’d originally judged, just a breath lingers between you. His smile is lopsided, and you know he’s about to tease you.

“I’m just making sure everything is going to plan over here,” he says, voice low and smooth. The sound of it makes you jittery.

His gaze lingers on you for a moment longer than you think he meant it to. With what seems like difficulty, he focuses back on your soup. Whatever game he’s playing, you’re not a fan of. Heat collects in your stomach.

He’s still so close to you. You can feel his breathing as he watches you cook. After a beat, he tentatively pulls on the material of your sweater. It’s calm and gentle, it feels more like an embrace than anything. And for a moment, you’re transported somewhere else. Your life is happy, you and Leon are in love, and he is gazing at you as you cook and tell him about your day. The thought is so domestic, you can’t find anything else to think about.

“Do you want a bowl?” you ask, voice barely above a whisper.

He nods, skating his hand against your side as he turns away from you to get two bowls from the cabinet behind him. You have half a mind to turn the fire off on the stove before you start rummaging around for a ladle.

He helps you get the soup into the two bowls. You’re not sure it was a two person job, but you can’t find it in you to complain. He follows you wordlessly to the table, where he takes a seat across from you. It’s so simple, and it makes your heart clench.

“Get robbed today?” he asks, handing you a spoon. You snort.

“No,” you say. “But some guy did come in and try to withdraw from a random account,”

Leon shrugs. “I think that technically counts,”

“It doesn’t count,” you say. “Not even a little bit,”

“Then what, exactly, counts as a robbery?” he asks, a teasing grin hanging on his lips. He’s trying to get a rise out of you, and it’s working.

“Guns, violence, a plan of some kind,” you say, only mildly exasperated. “Requesting to enter the safe,”

“You sound like you’ve done this before,” he says, cocking a brow at you.

You huff a sigh. “They train you for that, you know. There’s a video on what to do in the event of a robbery,”

“No amount of money is worth your life,”

“Eat your soup and leave me alone,”

He laughs, but does as he’s told. You hate that he knows exactly how to get under your skin. All he has to do is disagree with you, even if he doesn’t believe it, and you’re ready to pick a fight with him. You think he likes when you argue. You think you like it too, but that might just be because it’s with him.

He’s silent for a while, and you observe him. His movements are stiff. You can tell something is bothering him, but you’re not sure if it’s physical or mental. You’re not sure if you want to know.

Sometimes, in moments like these, you wonder what it would be like if Leon were different. You wonder what it could be like if there wasn’t this strange wall between you. You feel like you know everything about him, but you also know nothing at all. A ghost. He’s like a ghost. Ever present, but fleeting and fidgety, hard to understand and pin down. You might never understand his motives, you might never understand his actions, but that doesn’t mean he hasn’t infected you in some way. It doesn’t mean he hasn’t haunted you. You want to try your hand at necromancy, you want to bring him back somehow. You’re not certain it will work, but, God, you’re willing to try.

“How was your trip?” you try, swirling your spoon in your soup. Leon looks at you, brows drawn together to form an almost imperceivable line between them.

“It was alright,” he says, then takes a bite of soup.

You wait for more, knowing it will never come. “Just alright?”

“It was alright,” he says again. You let out a small sigh. His gaze shifts to somewhere between sympathetic and regret. “You know I can’t tell you,”

“I know, I know,” you say, blinking at your soup.

Leon helps you clean up. It’s an easy process. He dries dishes and puts them away as you wash them. He searches for a container large enough to hold the leftover soup, then finds it a home in your fridge, claiming he’ll be back for it. You laugh at him. The easiness returns, soft and simple, wrapping around you like the warmest blanket. He lights a candle, claiming it smells like food in the apartment, and settles onto your couch. He pulls his feet underneath him, curling into his side of the loveseat. He looks handsome like this, bathed in the flickering glow of the candle and the single lamp that illuminates your living room. You wish things would stay like this forever. You wish he would always be this beautiful to you, this kind and charming, this soft. In these moments, he is your Leon. He is a version of himself that only you get to see, and you cherish them as dearly as you would a childhood pet. He is no one else’s in these moments. You want him to be yours always. This Leon belongs to you.

“I accept that you can’t tell me things,” you say suddenly, overcome with a strange emotion that you can’t place. “I know that I will only ever get pieces of you, but those pieces are enough for me. Whatever version I get of you is enough for me,”

He blinks at you for a moment. You’re sitting on the other end of the couch, folded in on yourself. He leans in a bit, resting his chin on your knee.

“Do you really?” he asks, tone on the cusp of mockery. “I will keep disappearing. I will continue to keep secrets. That’s okay with you?”

Your heart hammers in your chest. As long as you still get something of him, you can’t complain. “That’s okay,”

There is nothing secretive about the way he kisses you. Unsaid truths pour out of him, and you wrap your arms around his neck to catch as many as you can. He kisses you like he means to keep you rooted in place, stuck in the sickeningly sweet molasses of his touch. Back pressed into the armrest, you pull him over you, and he runs his tongue over the seam of your lips, a silent plea for more. You indulge him, indulge in him, in this momentary ecstasy that he has granted you. You melt into him, bodies fitting together like they were made to. You decide, right then, that any subsequent heartache will be worth it. In this moment, he is yours. In this moment, there are no strings, nothing pulling you in another direction, no plane to catch. 

With fervor, he pulls away from you, hauling you into his lap. He doesn’t waste a single second before his mouth is on you again. Tender kisses scatter along your jaw, leading to your neck. His hands are on your waist, pulling at the hem of your shirt and roving over the new skin he’s revealed there. You sigh, sweet and low, tangling your hands in his hair. When your nails scratch over his scalp, his hips buck.

“Not fair,” he mumbles against the curve of your jaw. You stifle a laugh, a grin splitting across your face.

You pull back an inch to look at him. His pupils are dilated, eyes half lidded. His lopsided smile is back, more tender than it ever has been. You say, “I never have been,”

“You are…” he says.

He hauls you off the couch with him. The motion is far easier than you thought it would be, but Leon is strong and steadfast. With your feet planted firmly on the floor, he kisses you again, breathing you in like a man starved of air. God, you’re not sure how much more you can take, and you know he’s not quite done giving. He pulls you by your hand to your bedroom, an oddly youthful gesture that gives you teenage butterflies. The moment the door shuts, though, the air shifts. He is heat incarnate. He reaches for the hem of your shirt, but stops himself.

“Tell me no,” he says. You blink at him. “Tell me no, and I’ll stop. Right now, in five minutes, in an hour, whenever you want. Do you want this?”

Your mouth goes dry, hollow. You are hot and heavy and lost. “I want this,”

He stops wasting time. Your shirt is discarded, tossed somewhere to the other side of the room. You’ll find it later. A chill descends on you, nipples pebbling in the drastic temperature change. Leon is quick to soothe, hand roving over your breast as his mouth slots to yours. You sigh at the contact. Then he’s spinning you, walking you back towards your bed, the backs of your knees colliding with the plush of the mattress. You stumble, falling back down into the linen sheets and pillows, pulling him with you.

He’s beautiful in this lighting, all desperate and wandering hands and kiss bitten lips. The blue of his eyes are blown black with want, pupils dilated and dialed in on you. Warm hands smooth over your stomach, feeling the tremors there. You suck in a breath.

You keen against him when he mouths against your neck, pulling unbecoming noises from your lips. His hands are everywhere; your breasts, your waist, your stomach. His lips leave a blaze in their wake as they trail down your torso. Your hands find their way into his hair, pulling ever so slightly when he does something you like, which only seems to encourage him. Desire pulls into a pit in your stomach when he thumbs at the waist of your jeans. You prop yourself on your elbows, breathless and watching.

“This okay?” he asks, breathy, low, sweet.

You swallow and say, “Yeah. Yes,”

He pops the button, helping you shimmy out of the denim. You’re suddenly regretting your choice of underwear, but you’re praying he won’t notice. He doesn’t seem to as he coaxes them down your legs, pushing your thighs apart. He presses gentle kisses to the insides of your thighs, alternating as he approaches your center. You clench around nothing as he gets closer. Your head falls back against the mattress, a breathy moan escaping you once he flattens his tongue against you.

It’s electric, euphoric. You feel him everywhere, down to the very marrow of your bones as he kisses and licks, finds what you like. You bite down on your cheek to keep some of the noises inside.

“Don’t do that,” he says against you. It makes you hum. “Don’t get quiet on me now,”

You shudder a breath, the low, honey sweetened timbre of his voice doing nothing to cool your nerves. He’s already in tune with you, pushing where you need him most, trying his damndest to pull as many noises from you as he can. He groans when your hips buck against his face, slinging an arm across your hips to keep you in place. His other hand wanders up and down your thigh, a comforting motion that keeps you grounded. Your brain feels like it’s rotting inside your skull.

“Leon,” you whine, boneless.

“I’ve got you,” he says. You know he means it.

The coil in your stomach snaps when he pulls your clit between his teeth gently. Your grip in his hair tightens as your vision goes white, orgasm all consuming and intense. You twitch and tremor from overstimulation as he collects your wetness on his tongue, finding yourself pushing against him to find some relief.

When you find him above you once again, you decide that he has too many clothes on. You reach to rid him of his shirt, but find that he’s already doing it himself. You turn your attention to the buckle of his belt, fiddling with it until it finally pops free. It’s quick work to shuck his jeans off. His mouth crashes into yours, teeth and chaos. You run your hands along his abdomen, feeling him shudder beneath your touch.

It occurs to you to be frightened of how much you want him in this moment, but then he’s pulling off his boxers. Your mouth waters at the sight of him, flushed red and heavy. A pearl of precum rests at the tip, and you swallow thickly. It’s not long before you’re moving to touch him, swirling that bead over his tip. He shudders a groan through clenched teeth, curling his hands into fists and you pump him.

Then he’s laying you back, pressed between sheets. You gasp as the tip of his cock runs through your folds, collecting the wetness there. You wonder if you look as wrecked as you feel. Slowly, gently, reverently he pushes into you, letting out a low sound that goes straight to your center. He buries his face in your neck as he eases in, stretching you open so wide you’re afraid you’ll rip in half. Tears well at the corners of your eyes, mouth agape in a silent gasp, jaw slack and boneless. 

“Fuck,” you hear him say once he’s fully seated inside you. “Made for me,”

He pulls out slowly, leaving just the tip before he’s thrusting back in. It makes you see stars. You trail your nails down his back, earning a sweet noise loosed at the column of your throat. You can feel him everywhere. You’re dialed in on the pleasure, entirely focused on him, and you think he knows it. He rocks into you with an energy you’ve never seen before, pistoning in and out as mewls fall plush from your lips.

“Leon,” you mumble. “Please,”

“I know,” he says, voice shaking. “I know,”

He pushes one of your legs up as far as it will go, knee nearly touching your chin. You feel boneless, entirely at his mercy. You feel like you can feel him in your throat. He’s fucking you like it’s an artform, making you forget your own name. At this moment, all you know is him, his skin, his scent. You wouldn’t have it any other way.

Pressure builds in your stomach, and you’re clawing for him. His thrusts are getting sloppy, erratic. He’s mumbling praise into your shoulder, breathless. Your hips roll to meet his thrusts, earning a groan. He angles them up just a bit, hitting that perfect spot inside you. You clench around him. The new angle has you hurtling over the edge in moments, calling out his name as you shake and shudder around him. His grip tightens on your thigh, hard enough to leave bruises tomorrow.

He’s following you over soon thereafter, chest heaving as he fills you up. He stays there a moment, feeling you, catching his breath. You find yourself toying with the ends of his hair. You squeak as he pulls out. There’s a small smile on his lips as he admires his work. Then he disappears into your bathroom, only to return with a washcloth. He cleans you up gently, aware of the sensitivity as he does.

And then he’s climbing back into bed with you, pulling you flush against him. You’re surprised by the affection, but welcome it anyway. He smells of sweat and sex, cedar and smoke.

“That was stupid,” Leon says, hauling you into him. The words aren’t unkind, but they’re not gentle either. You stumble against him.

“Have I been known to be anything else?” you ask. He grunts. “Besides, I’ve got you to take care of me,”

He doesn’t respond. He finds a quiet spot, a reclusive corner where he can assess the damage. There’s a wicked gash along your side, cutting from near your navel up towards your ribs. It makes your vision tunnel when you finally lay eyes on it. You hadn’t known how bad it was. His fingertips are gentle around the surrounding skin.

“You’re lucky evac is two minutes out,” he says. His voice is hushed, like he’s telling you a secret. Maybe he is.

“Yeah?” you ask, a breathy noise that you’re not certain you could recreate. The sound is deep, rooted in desperation and blood loss. Leon’s eyes flick up at you from where he’s crouched, icy gaze cutting through his lashes. He looks pretty like this, bent low in front of you, looking at you with something you can’t place. It makes you shiver.

“You’re losing blood,” he says. You nod.

“Gonna give me yours?” you tease. Your vision tunnels a bit, and you slump forward. Leon catches you, pulling you flush against him. He smells like sweat and cedar and smoke, something that nearly lulls you into sleep. You hear a distant rumble as the building continues to crumble.

He helps you out of the derelict building. You’re barely even walking, just sort of stumbling beside him as he carries most of your weight, and you feel strangely guilty for making him do all the work. The helicopter’s blades never slow as it touches the ground. Leon helps you into your seat, guiding you gently. He’s soft as he slides the headphones over your ears, even going as far as to smooth a piece of hair out of your eyes. You can hardly keep them open.

“Stay with me,” he murmurs. It feels like a promise. “Can’t have you dying on me, now,”

“That would ruin your whole week,” you say, trying to smile. It’s a weak attempt at a joke, and he knows it. You can see tension make its home under Leon’s skin. It rears its head with every pull of muscle, every furrowed brow.

“We’ll be home soon,” he says. You nod. You’re not sure if he’s reassuring you or himself.

When you do finally land, you’re pulled away from him for medical attention. You fight as best as you can, attempting to sit in on the briefing, but Leon levels you with a gaze you’ve never seen him wear, and you accept defeat. There’s two medics standing idly in the room, and they turn to see you hobble in, eyes widening.

“What the hell happened?” one of them asks. You shrug, sitting down on the bed.

“Caught something sharp,” you say. They lift your shirt, which is in ribbons. A shock of pain rips through you, and you stifle a groan.

They work quickly, giving you a tetanus shot. You wince as the needle sinks beneath your skin. The pain only adds to the rest of it searing through your muscles. Now that you’re sitting, adrenaline having dissipated, everything hurts. The gash oozes blood, which makes you feel dizzy. Your back hurts, your legs hurt, your side hurts. Every time they touch you, you suck in a breath.

Finally, you’re stitched up. They tell you to take it easy for a week, shove pain meds into your hands, and send you out the door. Leon leans against the opposite wall, watching his boots. He looks tired, run down. He’s covered in dirt. Black streaks smear across his cheeks, his biceps. His hair falls like a golden frame over his eyes. You sigh.

He looks up then, watching you. He scans over your body, checking for any lingering injuries the medics managed to miss. You offer him a weak smile.

“No hospital?” he asks, pushing off the wall to meet you where you stand. His steps are heavy, tired. You shake your head. “Good. Let’s get you home,”

You follow him out of the building. It’s winding turns and desolate hallways until fresh air smacks you in the face. You take a deep breath, trying to let the residuals of the mission fall off of you. Leon’s car faces you, a beat up old Buick–he refuses to get anything newer–and it stares at you like it knows something you don’t. You fit easily into the passenger seat, like you were made for it. You lean back against the headrest. You feel suddenly exhausted, like a two ton weight rests in your chest. You just want to sleep. The drive to your apartment isn’t long, and you’re counting down the seconds until you’ll be able to slip into the shower and let the day wash down your back.

Leon helps you upstairs. You try to protest, tell him that the elevator isn’t going to exert you any more than the walk to the building itself, but he refuses to listen. He follows silently behind you until you reach your door. He’s like a shadow as you enter the apartment, still bathed in the darkness of night. You hate to do it, but you turn on the light, flooding the room and making you wince. Leon holds your arm to keep you steady as you toe off your shoes.

“You don’t have to babysit me, you know,” you say, not looking at him. “This isn’t the first time I’ve been hurt,”

He doesn’t say anything for a long, pregnant moment. But then, “I would like it to be the last, preferably,”

You huff a weak laugh, something hoarse and weary. “You and me both, partner,”

He follows you from room to room, picking things up as you drop them. Your right arm is effectively useless because any movement on that side sends shockwaves of pain through your entire body. You sigh heavily, fighting back tears. Leon stands in the threshold of your bathroom, holding your bundle of clothes and hairbrush. He looks at you with something you can’t identify–not quite pity, but something adjacent. He looks so pretty, so collected, even in his dirty state. You clutch your side.

“I can take it from here,” you say, breathless. “I’ll see you in a week,”

Leon stares at you. His fingers fidget with the hem of your sleep shorts. He opens his mouth to say something, then shuts it again. Then, “Do you want help?”

You blink at him. You hadn’t considered he’d be willing to help you. You hadn’t thought so far ahead as to know what you’d do to get out of your clothes.

With a breath, you say, “Yes, please,”

He nods wordlessly. Your clothes find their home as a heap on the sink counter. He pats the top of it once as if casting a spell to make them stay put. He turns to you then. He’s broad, forces you to dial in on him. His hands linger at his sides like he doesn’t know what to do with them.

You lift your left arm above your head, a silent encouragement to get him to touch you. His hands fall on you like a caress. Gently, he lifts your shirt up. His knuckles brush against your side, making your breathing hitch. He’s not watching you, fully focused on his task, but you can’t look away from him. He looks so focused, like one wrong move would paralyze you. He catches one end of the shirt in your armpit, pulling the other side out so you can slip your arm through. He helps ease your head through the collar, then pulls it off entirely via your other arm. He breathes in heavily through his nose at the expanse of skin he’s revealed. Then he takes a step back. You swallow thickly.

“I need…” you mumble, brain rotting inside your skull. “I can’t reach-”

“I got it,” he says. The words sound broken on his tongue.

You spin for him, presenting the clasp of your bra. You purse your lips when his warm hands make contact with the smooth skin on your back. He makes surprisingly quick work of it. Within seconds, you feel it loosening around your ribs, a small blessing. You breathe out something heady and heavy.

“I’ll be out there if you need anything,” Leon says. He leaves little room for argument by bustling out of the room as quickly as he can. You blink.

The shower water is hot on your skin, but it feels good. You can feel the tension slipping down your shoulders in rivulets. Somehow, you manage to wash yourself one handed, which you feel mildly proud of. The steam loosens you. It’s only when you step out of the water that you remember that you have to put a shirt on.

You struggle for what feels like hours. Every movement pulls on your stitches. You’re near tears when you finally call out for Leon.

“Yeah?” he asks, cracking the bathroom door. You sniffle.

“I can’t…” you say, taking a breath to recollect yourself. “I can’t get my shirt on,”

“I’ll help,” he says. His voice is so soft, so intimate. He enters quietly, staring at anything that isn’t you.

The shirt looks miniscule in his hands. Carefully, almost reverently, he eases the collar over your head. His gaze still lingers just past your shoulder. You frown. You slip your good arm through the sleeve.

Leon finally looks at you. You nod, letting him know it’s okay to put his hands on you. You see the turmoil in his eyes, the need for consent.

“You can touch me,” you say, voice barely above a whisper. He nods once.

He grips the hem of the shirt, pulling as far down as the fabric will let him. Then, softly, he helps guide your arm through the sleeve. His fingers brush against you again, just along the curve of your breast, but the touch is electric, crackling with something unsaid. The moment is so intimate, so personal, you could burst into tears. Then the shirt is fully on your body. You wonder if Leon can hear your heart hammering against your chest. If he can, he doesn’t acknowledge it. 

“Thanks,” you say, breathless. He nods. “I can handle the rest,”

“You sure?” he asks. There’s no suggestion in his tone, and that almost makes it worse. You breathe heavily through your nose, nodding.

He stands there as you fumble with your hairbrush. Your lips are pursed as you stare at yourself in the mirror. You’re barely halfway through the tangled strands before he stops you.

“Let me help,” he says–no begs. You glance at his reflection. He looks as wrecked as you feel. He worries his bottom lip between his teeth, gaze unblinking as he waits for you.

“Okay,” you say softly, voice hollow and breathy as you pass him the hairbrush.

He’s gentle as he works the brush through your hair. His gaze remains focused on the wet strands, but yours is on him. His brow furrows slightly, that bottom lip pulled snugly between his teeth as he pulls on a particularly tough tangle. His eyes look so blue in the yellowing light above the mirror. The care he takes with you is enough to make you sick. His hands are frustratingly warm as they bump against the back of your neck. He never once pulls or yanks, never scrapes the bristles against your skin, never gets frustrated. He works until it is done, unwaveringly, and you didn’t expect anything less. The moment is so soft, so delicate, you’re afraid that something might break when you pull away.

“I think I got it,” he says, soft as a whisper against you. You nod.

“Thank you,” you say. You stay idle for a moment, just watching him. He looks so unsure.

You think, in another lifetime, miles and miles away from here, that you could’ve loved him. He’s funny when he wants to be, charming in a boyish sort of way. You count on him, but he doesn’t let it get to him. He gives because he thinks it a privilege that you let him. You reach up to wipe away some of the dirt still smudged on his face. He stiffens beneath your fingertips, not prepared for such affectionate contact.

He swallows thickly. You remove your hand, and you see him relax just a fraction.

“Do you need any more help?” he asks in an almost broken way. You shake your head. “I’ll see you later, then?”

“Yeah,”

He ducks his chin at you, then shuffles out of the bathroom. You hear the front door open and click shut a moment later, leaving you alone in your apartment.

...

Leon is not sure that he would describe himself as kind or good. But on his drive home, as he thinks about your withered form presented to him in the dim light of your bathroom, looking up at him through your lashes like he was something holy, he starts to think that that doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter if he is kind or good because you kept looking at him like he was all you ever needed. He can still feel your skin against his fingers, sending shivers down his spine. 

He’d frozen up. He knows that he probably looked ridiculous, like a flushed school boy who had just stumbled into the girl’s locker room by accident. Your skin had been so soft. The expanse of flesh he’d discovered beneath your tattered shirt lives in his brain as he shuffles into his apartment. The space is dark and empty. He has very few personal items, unlike you. His space looks abandoned, which he guesses it usually is. He really only uses this place to sleep and eat sometimes. 

He crashes onto his couch, still unshowered and unclean. He just needs a moment, he tells himself. Just one moment, to collect the memories of you like precious items to set on his vacant shelves. The way you shivered against him when he brushed your side, the way you watched him, doe eyed, in the mirror as he brushed your hair, the humidity of the room clinging to you; they all go, framed and perfect, on shelves in his mind. He breathes out, something heavy and soft all at once. 

He’s unfamiliar with this feeling. He doesn’t know how to embrace it, so he decides that he shouldn’t. He’s not sure he deserves something as sweet and gentle as you. You’re better than him, in almost every way. You don’t let the job wear you down, you take pride in what you do. You tease him. The mercy and compassion you give him are foreign in his brain. And he feels so selfish for accepting every last scrap. He eats up the way you look at him, the way you laugh at his weak attempts at jokes, the way you worry after him even with a ten inch gash on your side that very easily could’ve gutted you. He is gluttonous and greedy and selfish. You are consuming him, and he is letting you. He shouldn’t. He shouldn’t let you plague him this way. He knows that it could all too soon be ripped away from him, but in this moment, in the dim light cast by the moon streaming through his curtains, he doesn’t care. A shudder rakes through his body, from head to toe. 

It would be all too easy to blame you. He could curse you for whatever spell you’ve cast to make him stupid in this way. But he knows the fault is his and his alone. It’s his fault that he mistakes your casual compassion for anything more. It’s his fault that he devours whatever good comes his way, just to corrupt and blacken it. And he doesn’t want to do that to you. He doesn’t want to see where this will end, even if he has before and knows it as intimately as he knows every other aspect of death and decay.

He tips his head back against the couch. There’s a crack in his popcorn ceiling, cutting through the expanse of white like a vein. 

He knows he’s cut open and bleeding at your feet. He’s wounded in a way that doesn’t make sense. He doesn’t want you to help him. Not because he doesn’t ache to feel your gentle hands smooth over his scarred flesh, working out the evil with every electrifying touch, but because he does, and that would make you the universe’s top priority. 

He is cursed, a bad day after a worse one. And he knows that if he were to let you have him the way he wants, you’d become cursed too. Cursed with him and his aches and pains, his scars and bruises, his anger and resentment. 

When he settles beneath the sheets that night, he dreams of you. He dreams of your soft skin against him, your laughter, your easy smiles. He dreams of the life he could have were it not for his exceedingly awful luck.

He could save you. He could prevent you from ever coming nearer. But that somehow feels like a worse, more torturous ending. And he is nothing if not selfish.

...

The next time you see Leon, it’s nearly a week later. The swelling on your side has gone down and most of the pain has subsided, but it’s still tense and unforgiving, especially so early in the morning. There’s little light coming through the curtains thanks to the steady stream of rain pelting the earth.

His hair is soggy, casting thick shadows over the high points of his face. There’s crystal droplets on the shoulders of his jacket, ones you want to reach out to shake off, but you refrain. He smiles at you, that gentle half smile he only ever wears when he’s half exhausted. 

“Came to check on you,” he says softly, words turned plush on the corners of his lips. You smile.

“Unfortunately, I’ve succumbed to sepsis. You’re seeing a ghost,” you joke. He rolls his eyes and pushes past you into the apartment.

He shakes off like a dog as he hangs his coat on the hook. A few rogue water droplets smatter your face. You take a moment to observe him. The lines of his body are rigid like there’s something pulling him taught. For a moment, you ache to reach out and smooth your palms over his muscles, to help him relieve some of that tension. You wonder if that’s something that would be okay, if he would welcome your touch. There is a line that stands between you, and you’re not sure which side of it you reside on. 

“Anything interesting happen in the week that I’ve been gone?” you ask, leaning against the back of the couch.

Leon hums, pursing his lips as he thinks back on the last few days. “There’s a new coffee machine in the break room,”

You huff a laugh. “Can’t wait to try that baby out,”

Silence stretches thick between you, like a rope that’s been left out in the rain. You watch him move with careful precision, finding where would be the best place to exist within. You wonder why he never seems to relax, even in your space. You wonder if he knows how much you care. Subconsciously, you run the pads of your fingers over your injury. It’s a rough stretch of skin now, bubbled with scar and scab. You frown.

“Does it hurt?” he asks, suddenly standing again to get to your side. He catches your wrist where it hovers near the tear.

You shrug. “Only when I think about it,”

He purses his lips and emits a low hum, giving you a once over. “Have a fever at all?”

You shake your head. He nods, once and curt, before dropping your wrist and stepping away from you. 

“Do you need any help?” Leon asks, avoiding your gaze by scanning around the room. “Any chores that have been neglected? Any errands I can run for you?”

You feel the corner of your mouth tick up in a small smile. Shaking your head, you say, “No, Leon. I’ve been able to manage on my own,”

“I know,” he says. He pulls his bottom lip between his teeth, gnawing on the soft flesh there in thought. Then, soft as a whisper, he says, “I was worried about you,”

You feel your heart catch in your throat. You think back to the way he looked at you that night, like you were broken before him and he couldn’t do anything to fix you. You think about how gentle he was with you, how careful he was like you were bursting at the seams. You see his cheeks turn a tinge of pink as the silence stretches thick between you. You reach out, placing a flat palm against his chest. There’s no sound in the apartment, just the rain outside and your own heavy breathing.

“You don’t need to worry about me, Leon,” you say, just as soft. “I know you’ll always take care of me,”

He swallows, something heavy and unsaid, and nods. “I will,”

It feels like a promise. It feels like a vow.

With an intake of breath, you say, “Anything on our docket?”

Leon purses his lips. “Not on yours,” he says. You frown. “You’re on light duty for a while,”

You twist your face up in a nasty expression, which makes Leon smile a fraction. “I don’t like that,”

“That’s what I figured you’d say,” he says. He moves around you to finally sit down. You’re almost surprised as he gets comfortable on your couch. You move to join him. “I tried to tell Hunnigan you wouldn’t go down easy,”

“I can’t imagine I have much choice,” you say, grumbling. “Did they say for how long?”

Leon shakes his head. “Could be a while,”

You groan.

“Hey,” he says, gently. “You took a hard hit. It’s either office duty or a grave,”

You scowl at him, and he flashes you a smile. “Promise me you won’t get yourself killed while I’m gone,”

He makes a motion over his chest. Cross my heart.

The next week, Leon is shipped out to God knows where. They won’t tell you, probably afraid you’d commandeer a craft to chase after him. You’re checking in with Hunnigan by the hour, who tells you you’re being paranoid. How can you not be? He’s out there, alone, doing something, something dangerous, and you’re stuck writing reports and drinking watered down coffee from the new machine in the break room. He could be hurt, he could be dead, and you would never know the difference. It makes you sick, it makes you scared.

“Separation anxiety?” Sherry asks, taking a seat beside you. You’re staring at a monitor, feeling like your eyes are melting out of your head.

“Shut up,” you retort, making her laugh. “I just worry about him,”

“Y’know, I think I had this exact conversation with him a couple weeks ago,” Sherry says, grinning at you. You scowl at her. “You two act like if you’re not attached at the hip, you’re basically dead,”

“That’s what it feels like,” you murmur. You sigh. “You don’t get it,”

“Maybe not,” Sherry says, shrugging. “But I do know what it’s like to feel,”

You blink at her. “Don’t you have somewhere else to go be annoying?”

Sherry jabs a finger into your side, making you yelp. “Don’t be mean to me just because you’re grumpy,”

You huff.

You are not grumpy.

...

Leon feels half dead on his feet as he trudges up the stairs of your apartment building. He’s been gone almost two weeks, with little to no contact with you. It feels like it’s killing him. He feels like it’s sucking out his will to live. He just wants to see you.

He knocks gently on your door. It’s late, just past midnight, but he knows you’re still awake, always the night owl. You open it a second later, wearing a shirt three sizes too big and an old pair of sweatpants; he thinks you’ve never looked more beautiful. You give him a once over, scanning him for injuries, and when you don’t appear to find any, you crash into him. He lets out an oomph as his arms settle around your waist. You smell like home, and he feels his heart crack open a little.

“Worried about you,” you whisper into his shoulder. He holds you a little tighter.

“Not over yet,” he says, and you pull away, squinting at him. He shrugs his jacket off to reveal a nasty cut along his bicep. He smiles sheepishly at you.

You sigh, and it’s like the greatest symphony ever written. “Grab a seat at the table. I’ll patch you up,”

His pain ebbs as he sits. You return to him moments later with a first aid kit and a scowl. Your soft hands against his skin are what keep him tethered to the earth. Pain threatens to eat at his muscles and sinew, to consume him. But you’re gentle, easing through it like a softbed creek, curving over already smooth stones.

“Did you even try to get out of the way?” you murmur. You don’t look at him, but he’s watching you. He sees the twitch at the corner of your mouth as you clean the wound, the pull of your brows in concentration. You look so beautiful like this, like a pink sunrise, a reminder that good is out there.

“Sort of,” he mumbles back. You frown at him. “I didn’t really have time,”

You hum. Once the wound is thoroughly disinfected, you prime the needle for stitches.

“This will hurt,” you say, sinking the steel beneath his flesh. He doesn’t react. You make quick work of the area, making sure to tape over it to protect the stitches. When he’s all patched up, you pat his other arm, saying, “Try to make time so that this doesn’t happen again,”

He nods, watching you. You’re a breath away, inspecting him for any other injuries he may be sequestering. He reaches up hesitantly, tucking a strand of hair behind your ear. He feels giddy at the way your eyes widen.

“Pretty,” he says, so softly he’s not even sure you hear it. He wonders if he’s concealing the deep, desperate love he has for you, or if he’s bearing it all with his gaze. At this point, he’s not sure he cares. 

“Flattery will get you nowhere, Kennedy,” you say, smiling at him. “I’m still mad at you,”

Soft as a whisper, he says, “I think I can handle that,”

Without much further thought, Leon closes the gap. You let out a little squeak when his mouth meets yours, but you almost melt into him. He’s so relieved that he could cry. Your hands find purchase along the curve of his jaw, his own grasping at the loose fabric of your shirt. You sigh sweetly into him, coating his nerves in a saccharine so destabilizing he can’t help but return it. When you fall into his lap, parting your lips and winding your arms around him, he’s afraid he’s died and gone to Heaven. And when your tongue finally meets his, he groans, something deep and guttural and unbecoming.

You pull away, a string of saliva hanging from your kiss bitten lips. You rest your forehead against his. His every perception centers on you; your hands on his chest, your nose bumping his as your chest heaves, your smell, the skin of your neck, open and exposed for him. He wants you, needs you like you’re the only thing that can save him. And when you kiss him again, a fire burns anew in his chest. Your hands are everywhere; his arms, his shoulders, his chest, and they find a home winding into his hair. A gentle tug against his scalp has his hands tightening their grip on your hips, begging you to still.

“Leon,” you murmur against his mouth, heady and soft all at once. 

“I’m here,” he says, and he means it. He has never been more present. And then he’s standing, lifting you with him to place you back on the floor. You stare at him, pupils blown wide, gnawing on your bottom lip.

He pulls you flush against him because he can’t help himself. He is nothing if not selfish, nothing if not gluttonous and greedy, and now that you’ve given him this small victory, he wants to see if he can keep winning you. He sees the quiet desperation in the deep color of your eyes, the way you’re watching him with your full, rapt attention.

“You can touch me,” you say, voice low and barely audible. He wants to eat you alive.

He wastes little time after that, mouth crashing against yours with renewed energy. His heart swells in his chest when you cling to him all the same. Your fingers dig into the tops of his shoulders. He taps his fingers once against your thigh, signaling you to jump. He catches you, carries you close against him until you’re laid out against the sheets. He doesn’t stray far, following you into the linen, soft and sweet.

He watches you for a moment, taking it all in. You’re smiling at him, grinning really as he hovers above you. You brush your fingers against his cheek, smoothing away whatever doubt may be lingering. He ducks his head, pressing feather light kisses to the column of your throat, making your breath hitch there. He doesn’t get far, not when you pull his mouth back to yours, grasping at his shirt in an effort to rid him of it. Leon is a compliant man, flashing you a grin as he pulls back to yank it off. He wonders if your cheeks warm like his, if you can hear the hard hammer of his heart in his chest.

...

Leon is all rigid muscle, sinew pulled tight and corded along his arms, the plans of his stomach, his shoulders. You feel almost animalistic, feral. You run flat palms over him, feeling him twitch and tremor under your touch.

“Pretty,” you say, soft as a whisper. He huffs a laugh.

You push him back slightly, only giving yourself enough room to sit forward to pull off your own shirt. You watch him swallow thickly as it gets discarded somewhere across the room. His hands are soft, gentle against the revealed skin as he kisses you again. Feather light touches across your waist, your stomach. Rough and callused palms against your breast, thumb finding your nipple. You arch into him at the contact, tightening your grip on his shoulders.

You’re aching, cut open and bleeding. His hands leave goosebumps and fire in their wake as he lays you back against the sheets, tracing his lips down your torso, stopping at the waistband of your pants. He looks up at you, chest heaving. You nod, a gentle duck of your chin. Your breath catches in your throat as he slowly–painstakingly slowly–tugs your pants down. He lets his hands wander over your exposed thighs, hopefully ignoring your choice of underwear. Light touches against your hips cause them to fall open. You wonder if you look as vulnerable as you feel. He presses the gentlest kisses to the insides of your thighs, head bouncing between them.

“I’ll take care of you,” he says, a mumble against your skin. It sends shivers down your spine.

When he presses an open mouth kiss to the apex of your thighs, you think you black out for a second. A breathy gasp echoes off the walls. He tugs your underwear out of the way to flatten his tongue against you. The sound you make is unbecoming, head dropping back against the pillows. He wastes little time, sucking and kissing and licking as he finds his rhythm, finds what you like, what makes you the loudest. He eats you out like it’s a game, like he’s determined to get the highest score. Your vision is nearly white, fingers buried in his hair. When you tug on it a bit, he groans, deep and sultry, sending shocks to your brain. 

Your thighs begin to shake when he pulls your clit between his teeth, a breathy moan escaping you. He locks an arm across your hips to keep you in place. You’re shamelessly grinding against his face, chasing release. You keen high and whiny as he slides two fingers into you.

“C’mon, sweetheart,” he says, low and heavy. “Make a mess on me,”

He curls his fingers against you. The stretch and tempo and timbre of his voice were nearly enough to send you over the edge, but what does you in is seeing him lean back to watch you, stubble brushing the inside of your thigh. You clench around his fingers as you come, writhing and panting like an animal. You watch him lick his fingers clean before you’re clawing for him, pulling his mouth back up to yours. You groan as you taste yourself on his tongue. Your fingers fumble with the clasp on his belt, fighting to free him of it. You feel him chuckle against you as he reaches down to help you. He pulls away a bit to shuck off his trousers.

Your mouth waters when his cock springs free from his boxers, thick and flushed and dripping. Instinctively you reach for it, but he stalls you, gently grasping your wrist. You frown up at him.

“Won’t last very long,” he says by way of explanation.

“Next time, then,” you say, chest heaving. He grins at you, climbing over you again.

His kisses are addictive, you decide. You’re not sure how you ever went without them. They’re all consuming, send you spinning. You’re flat on your back again, pulling him as close as you can, running your hands down the expanse of his chest. He lines himself up with your entrance, gently pushing himself inside. The stretch is devastating. You break the spell of his kiss to gasp, jaw slack. His chest heaves as he buries himself in you, arms flexing on either side of your head. He stalls once he’s fully seated inside you. You smooth his hair away from his face, thumb swiping against his cheekbone. You feel so full; of him, of want, of love.

“You okay?” he asks, voice hoarse and heavy. You grin at him.

“Never been better,” you say.

You lock your legs around his waist, begging him to stay close to you. He drops his head, turning into your palm more as he begins to slowly pull out of you. The drag of him against your walls has you keening. He almost pulls out fully before pushing back in, setting a languid pace that has you boneless. One hand smooths up your side, cupping your breast. You pull him back down to you, mouth meeting his in a devastating kiss. He sighs heavy against your lips, a whimper so delicious it has you rolling your hips just to hear it again. He moves to bury his face in your neck, pressing gentle kisses to the skin there.

“So pretty,” he mumbles. You sigh. “Like you were made for me,”

The praise has you scratching your nails lightly down his back, earning you another pretty noise. His thrusts pick up their pace but never lose their softness. He ruts into you like a man consumed, mumbling against your sweat slick skin.

“Dreamed of this,” he says. His hands wander over you, fingertips gentle against your injury. “Dreamed of you. My pretty girl,”

There’s a pressure building in your stomach, a coil wound tight, threatening to burst every time he opens his mouth.

“Yours,” you say. “Always have been,”

His thrusts turn shallow, deep. He says, “Doin’ so good, fuckin’ perfect,”

You clench around him, huffing a breathy moan. “Leon,”

“I’m here,” he says. “I’m right here,”

His thumb finds your clit, and you’re seeing stars. White hot pleasure radiates throughout your body, threatening to consume you. He picks up the pace, chasing his own release. He thrusts one, two, three more times before he’s groaning in your ear and filling you up. He collapses against you, chest heaving and panting. Your fingers wind into his hair, toying with the ends. Every now and then you feel him press kisses to the column of your throat. 

“Leon,” you whisper. He hums. “I think your stitches split,”

He laughs then, a bright, airy sound that splits your chest open with want. He pulls back to look at you, and you note the way his eyes brim with adoration. You feel suddenly shy.

“You gonna patch me back up?” he asks, soft against you. You grin.

“Yeah,” you say, brushing the hair out of his eyes. “I will,”

When a case comes across your desk, you want to run and hide. If you never have to autopsy a half human again, it would be too soon. You stare at the unopened file, willing yourself as best you can to open it and get started. You just can’t. Leon shoulders his way into your cracked office door, raising his eyebrows when he catches your gaze. He’s holding a bagel haphazardly wrapped in a few napkins and a cup of coffee. It almost makes you smile.

“Got something new?” he asks, crossing the room. He sets the coffee on your desk, sticking out his arm to hand you the bagel. You take it, picking at some of the bread flaking off of it.

“Yeah, seems that way,” you say, defeat creeping into your voice. You turn back to the file, staring at it like it might bite you if you try to open it. Maybe it will.

“What is it?” Leon asks, leaning over you to peek at the unopened file. You shrug. “You haven’t looked at it?”

You shake your head. “I don’t want to,”

He steals a sip from the coffee he brought, face souring at the sweetness of it. You like a lot of sugar in yours, compared to his preference of straight black. He pulls a chair over, sitting beside you.

You’re still in that awkward stage of…whatever this is. You’re not sure where you stand, exactly. Obviously, your relationship is different than it was a few months ago, but you’re not sure what to make of it now. You haven’t had time to go out, not really. Between his unpredictable visits at work and catching him in the hallways of events, you haven’t had a chance to even talk about things.

Leon pulls the file in front of him, opening it without a second thought.

“I don’t think you’re allowed to do that,” you say, smiling a bit. He shrugs.

“It’s never stopped me before,” he says, eyes glued to the information that lies in the file.

You lean over to steal a glance at the words. Half of it is redacted, thick black lines covering names and places. Sentences are bisected by the opposite of a highlight. You frown.

“How am I supposed to do my job if I can’t see most of it?” you huff. Leon smooths a hand over your shoulder. The action relaxes you a bit.

“Looks like whatever is going on is along the coast,” he says. You nod. “Beached whales,”

“What?” you blurt, pulling the file into your view. Sure enough, red lines accent the information. Whales and other animals are dead under mysterious circumstances. They’ve already ruled out oil and factory by-products.

“That’s not good, I take it,” Leon half jokes. You pin him with a look. He grins. “Definitely not good,”

“Not good at all,”

You stare at the file, reading over what you can while you gnaw slowly on your bagel. Leon busies himself by attempting to braid a piece of your hair. He’s not very good at it, but he’s trying.

“I have to go soon,” he mumbles, not removing his deft fingers from your scalp. There’s tenderness in his touch, a feeling you’re still getting used to. “You’ll be alright?”

You turn a bit to look at him. The softness in his blue eyes is enough to make you melt. You want to say no. You want to tell him to stay and keep sitting with you. You breathe easier in his presence.

“Yeah, I’ll be alright,” you say instead, reaching up to take one of his hands. He gives it a little squeeze as he pulls away from you. As he gathers his things to leave, he presses a gentle kiss to the crown of your head.

“I might be gone a few days,” he says. You blink at him. “I’ll call when I can,”

“Okay,” you say, voice chopped around the bite of bagel you’ve taken. “Be safe,”

He’s gone without another word, leaving you empty without his presence. A strange air settles over your bones, caking you in what feels like melancholy. You scrunch your nose in response, turning back to your files and reports. You suppose you should find a supervisor or someone in order to get more information on your case. You don’t want to. You want to freeze in place until Leon gets back. For whatever reason, you feel like you can’t take on a case on your own anymore. Having another brain to bounce ideas off of certainly makes the job easier. Before, you’d been able to churn through cases without a second thought. But now, you feel like you need a partner. It makes you frown.

It’s two days later when you touch down on the sand of a North Carolina beach. There’s a sad looking, half alive whale flipping its tail aimlessly along the shore. You sigh deeply, watching it blink against the sand getting thrown in its eye from the wind.

“Not looking good,” Rebecca says from behind you. Her backpack is almost twice the size of her, making her hunch slightly.

“It looks like it’s in so much pain,” you say sadly. “What do we do?”

“I don’t think there’s anything we can do,” Rebecca says, resting a hand on your shoulder. You nod.

You follow her down the beach, watching as the whale attempts to move itself back into the water with its flippers. The fruitless action makes your heart clench. It’s much bigger up close than you really expected. You knew whales were big, sure, but you’d never seen one this close. You run your palm along its nose, and it grunts at you. The sound is guttural and raspy, like it's gasping. Your stomach churns.

Rebecca rounds the side of the whale, and you follow her. You crouch down to examine what looks like an infected wound on its side. The stench is almost unbearable. You’ve experienced your fair share of horrid smells, but this one is unlike anything else you’ve encountered. The wound pulses with each ragged breath the animal takes, oozing some kind of mustard colored pus. Rebecca begins her work gently, trying her best to not agitate the area any further. You watch carefully, taking note of how hard it is for the animal to breathe. You imagine what it would be like if you were superhuman. Maybe you could heal the whale with a single touch, then push it back into the ocean where it could return to its family. The thought makes your lip quiver.

“I think I’m going to be sick,” you say, taking a step back. You’re not quick to sicken at the sight of a wound, but this one feels different.

The whale is innocent, a bystander in the grand scheme of things. It lives in the ocean, far removed from the sins of society, unbothered by the happenings of the land. And yet, here it lies, half dead and suffering a far greater fate than it deserves. You’re not sure how long whales live, but this one looks young enough, only to be cut down in its prime.

You back away further from the whale, watching through squinted eyes as Rebecca collects a sample from its still writhing flesh. Your mouth suddenly waters, and you feel like you’re spinning. You plop onto the sand, pain racing up your spine. The wind blows again, kicking up sand and tossing it over the drying skin of the whale. This isn’t right. This whale shouldn’t be here, but it is due to the cruelty of man. You put your head in your hands.

“You okay?” Rebecca asks, approaching you. She’s sealing the vial into a bag. “We can take a break,”

You want to run far away, maybe to a mountain. You’re sure that even if you did, evil would find you there too.

“No,” you muster, trying to return to your feet. “There’s another whale a few yards away, we should look at that one before we go anywhere,”

Rebecca nods, falling into step beside you as you approach yet another whale. This one is dead, has been for a few days. You wonder why no one has been out to do anything about it. You wonder if they would’ve just let it rot on the beach. Given the weather, you’re almost positive there’s not a crowd approaching the shore any time soon, but would they have just left it here? Let it rot until the elements gave it an unceremonious grave?

There’s a large open wound on the face of this one, picked away by the wildlife in the area. The rotting flesh is barely hanging on, decaying before your eyes. You’re not even sure it knew it was dying. Maybe it did; maybe that’s why it decided to throw itself onto the beach. You try not to think about it.

You spend the next few hours pouring over files of similar incidents from the past few years. There’s been few reports of similar things happening, but the ones that have been reported are eerily parallel happenings. Two or three dead or dying whales hauling themselves onto the beach, covered in indeterminate wounds, and clinging to life. Only a few have been confirmed as sea wildlife interaction or accidental man-made byproduct spills, but there are others that have no concrete explanation.

“We’re gonna be taking off here soon,” Rebecca says, reading over your shoulder. You nod. “Are you alright?”

“Yeah,” you say, loosing a sigh. “The whales are making me sad. It could’ve been prevented,”

Rebecca sits in the chair next to you. You look at her. She looks tired, like this is taking a toll on her too. “It could’ve. But that’s why we’re here. We can prevent it from happening again,”

You nod. “That’s why we’re here,” you repeat. She offers you a small smile, leaving you again to your notes.

It’s two hours later before you’re back home. You feel heavy, like the whales themselves are tied to your ankles as you climb the stairs to your apartment. When you enter, the lights are off. You let out a breath you didn’t know you’d been holding. You remove everything on your body; keys and wallet find their home in a dish near the door, jacket returns to its home on the hook, and your shoes slip off easily next to the couch. You feel slightly lighter having taken off your armor, but a shower would really do you good. You’re sure you smell like whale guts.

Wordlessly, you gather a pile of clothes and head to the bathroom. It’s then that you finally catch a glimpse of yourself in the mirror. Your cheeks have filled out in the last few weeks, and you’re sure you have Leon to thank for always bringing you snacks and lunch. Your skin is a bit brighter, your eyes less hollow. You smooth a hand over features you don’t entirely recognize. 

You’d always vowed that you would never let a partner change you. Too many times, you’d lost parts of yourself to people who didn’t deserve them, and you always told yourself that it would never happen again. But this time feels different. Leon has changed you. You’re certain of that. But he has changed you in a good way. He’s made you excited for things, even simple things like showing him a movie he’s never seen before. He’s made you lust for life in a way you never have before. Maybe changing for your partner isn’t the worst fate, especially if you’re changing like this.

Suddenly, the whales don’t hang as heavily on your shoulders anymore. They’re behind on the beach where you left them, not discarded, but not following either. You acknowledge their pain, feel it as deeply in your chest as if you had been struck, but you won’t let yourself carry it anymore. With a strange sense of renewal, you step into the shower. When you emerge, you hear rustling in your kitchen. Fear strikes your body for a few moments as you quietly dress. As silent as you can manage, you creep into the hallway.

Light from the kitchen streaks across the otherwise dark floor, a shadow of a body moving around. You approach. You’re not entirely surprised to find Leon standing in the light of your fridge, blinking at you as he uncorks a bottle of wine. You let out a breath, taking the bottle from him.

“That was a gift, you know,” you say, placing the bottle back in its place on the top shelf. “I’m saving it for a special occasion,”

“My return is not special enough?” he asks. You glare at him, and he responds with a grin. “You wound me,”

Without much warning, he scoops you into his arms. His embrace is warm, comforting. The wet strands of your hair are sticking to your skin, something that would normally be uncomfortable, but you can’t find it in you to care.

“How’d it go?” you ask, voice muffled by the down of his jacket.

You feel him shrug. “As well as it could have,”

You nod. “I dissected whales today,” you say, cringing.

“How’d it go?”

“As well as it could have,”

He winces when you pull away. You’re sure he didn’t mean for you to catch the action, but you do anyway. You frown at him, a knowing glint in your eyes. He sighs, struggling to free himself from his jacket. Your breath hitches when he pulls his shirt up gingerly to reveal a gash along his rib cage. It’s angry and red, cutting toward his sternum.

“Do you have a death wish?” you ask, glancing up at him. He’s frowning, cheeks reddened from your disappointment.

“No,” he says, returning his shirt to its rightful place. “I didn’t think it was as bad as it is,”

You scrub a hand down your features. “Go sit. I’ll patch you up,”

He nods, hesitating to move. You blink at him. “Can I at least have a kiss?”

Against your better judgement, you smile, leaning up to kiss him quickly before shoving him through the archway of your tiny kitchen. You can almost hear the grin splitting across his lips. With a sigh, you follow him. He takes a seat on your couch with some difficulty. You frown at him.

“I can’t believe you,” you mutter, pulling a first aid kit out of a cabinet. “Did you see anyone? One of the onsite med staff? Anyone at all?”

Leon’s features twist up in embarrassment at your scolding. Sheepishly, he says, “No. I had other things to worry about,”

You let out a long sigh, pulling on a pair of gloves. A sudden bout of nerves coats your bones, making your hands shake a bit. You’ve never been nervous about your ability to heal people. Even Leon. You don’t like that you suddenly are. With a quick shake of your head, you turn to him. He pulls his shirt up for you to examine his wound. It’s not too deep, which is good considering it goes right over important organs. It is bleeding a lot, though, which is worrisome. You get to work cleaning it. Leon lets out a hiss of pain as you run an alcohol pad over it.

“You reap what you sow,” you mumble, a small admonishment for coming back to you broken and beaten. “What was your plan? Drink casually until I noticed you were bleeding?”

“More or less,” he says through gritted teeth.

You furrow your brow and feel your mouth twist up, wrinkling your nose. “Not cool,”

After you’ve cleaned away as much of the blood as you can, you change out gloves and prepare to stitch him up.

“This will hurt,” you say, not giving much more warning before sinking the needle into his flesh. He tenses up.

“What happened to your bedside manner?” he asks. You huff a laugh.

“That’s reserved for people who deserve it, Kennedy,” you say. “Besides, you like me better this way. You know I’m not nice to you,”

As you tighten your stitch work, he groans. “A little faux kindness wouldn’t hurt,”

You shrug, finishing up his stitches. “I need you to stand,”

He groans again, this time a little more dramatically, but does as you ask. It’s not without difficulty, but he’s eventually able to get to his feet. You begin to wrap the area in gauze, passing the roll between your hands behind his back. It’s a shoddy job, but it does what it needs to.

“There,” he says. “Good as new,”

“Don’t do that again,” you say, frowning at him. “Believe it or not, I don’t appreciate sewing you up,”

He rolls his eyes playfully. “I hereby swear to never show up to your place injured ever again,”

“Cross your heart,”

“Hope to die,”

“Go shower,” you say, giving his chest a little shove. “You stink,”

He presses a quick kiss to the crown of your head before disappearing into your room. You sigh, looking around at the whirlwind of medical supplies scattered around you. After a hard blink, you start to clean up. It’s a quick process, with you fleeting between the kitchen and the living room as you dispose of everything. Finally, you’re able to collapse on the couch. You scrub a hand over your face, feeling suddenly exhausted from everything. What you wouldn’t give for a week’s vacation.

“You need to tell your landlord that you’re not getting hot water,” Leon calls from the hallway. He emerges a second later, running a towel over his half dry hair. He’s wearing a loose fitting t-shirt and a pair of sweats he left here the last time he ambushed you. “Also, stop leaving your spare key under the doormat. It’s not safe,”

“I don’t have anyone breaking in but you,” you say, exhaustion clogging your throat with a yawn.

“Still, I don’t like it,” he says, flopping onto the couch beside you. “It’s the first place I looked,”

You shrug, curling up onto the arm of the couch. You yawn again, this time louder, and settle in as best you can. You fall quickly into a dreamless sleep, one where you feel completely safe and comfortable.

You wake sometime later to your phone ringing. You groan, sitting up and taking in your surroundings. Leon is asleep upright on the couch beside you, arm slung over his eyes. The other hand rests on your calf. At some point, he must’ve turned the TV on; it’s running some news cycle. You haul yourself up, searching for your phone.

“Hello?” you answer, voice muffled by sleep.

“How quick can you get here?” Rebecca asks on the other end. You frown. “We have to go back,”

“To the whales?” you ask, rubbing one of your eyes. “Why?”

“I’ll tell you on the way,” she says. “How quick can you get here?”

You glance at the clock. It’s nearing four in the morning. “Probably a half hour?”

“Good,” she says. “Bring Leon. See you soon,”

With that, the line goes dead. You sigh, flipping your phone closed. With a stretch, you return to the couch where Leon is already watching you.

“Time to go to work,” you say. He nods wordlessly.

By the time you get to the helipad, the sun is starting to peek over the horizon. Leon marches ahead of you, both bags slung over his shoulders. You diverge to find Rebecca tapping her foot anxiously near the door.

“What’s going on?” you ask, voice nearly drowned out by the blades of the helicopter beginning to whirl.

“No time,” she says. “Let’s go,”

You follow her to the helicopter, hopping in beside Leon, who hands you a headset wordlessly. His hard exterior has shifted into place, something that makes your heart sink. You’re in the air minutes later, flying high above the helipad. The sun glares at you as it rises, as if it’s angry that you’re up and moving before it is.

“Whatever got those whales is spreading to people on the coast,” Rebecca says, pulling a file from her bag to hand to you. “We received this late last night,”

You skim over the file, Leon leaning over to read over your shoulder. Sure enough, there’s at least twenty reported cases since yesterday. Your shoulders deflate as you read. This infection seems different from the last one.

“Is anyone dead?” you ask, looking up at Rebecca. Her mouth hardens into a line, and you have your answer.

“There’s cadavers ready for your examination,” she says instead. You nod.

“I want to look at their brains,” you say. “And their hearts,”

“Probably a good call,” she says. “We don’t have anything back on the whales yet, so don’t even ask. The lab’s been swarmed with shit since last night,”

You sigh. “Great. So what should we expect when we land?”

“Hell,”

A little over two hours later, and your feet touch down on the uneven terrain of the land meeting beach. Tents have been constructed, which always seems to surprise you. You trudge on, heading toward the medical tent without a word. It’s chaos inside, doctors rushing between half dead and writing patients. You feel your stomach churn. Someone tosses a box of gloves at you, which you barely catch, and hollers at you to help. Wordlessly, you join the fray. 

For what seems like hours, you bounce between patients. Some are more conscious than others, while others seem completely normal. You can’t figure out what’s causing anything. Everything seems to be random; patients are screaming because their hands are decaying before their eyes while others only have a mild headache. Finally, you’re able to step away. You’re pulled aside to autopsy a body found a few miles out from the beach.

Whoever this was died a horrible, brutal death. Their skin is gray and splotchy, with blisters covering most of the area. Some of them have popped and are oozing a horrid smelling pus that almost makes you vomit.  If you had to picture the word death, this would be it. With as much courage as you can muster, you begin to slice into the body. It opens easily, skin having lost its ability to resist damage. The bones inside have been eaten away so badly that you’re not even sure how it still has any shape. Muscles are gooey under your fingers as you root around inside the chest cavity. When you finally find the heart, you almost burst into tears.

It’s just a lump of liquid muscle, a shell of what it once was. Upon inspection, you find that the chambers inside have been eroded into one giant one, one incapable of pumping blood. Every piece you find makes everything more puzzling. This heart hasn’t been operational in some time. Something else was fueling the body.

“You’re sure these people are moving around right up until death?” you ask a doctor near you.

“Positive,” he says grimly. “I wouldn’t believe it either had I not seen it myself,”

You sigh. “Got it,”

You return the heart to its home, moving down the body to get to its head. You dismantle it quickly, desperate to get some kind of answer from the brain. Fortunately, it’s mostly intact. However, you notice that the spinal cord has been eaten away slightly. You crack it open, interested in what the inside looks like. As you do, a lesion pops, splattering your face with whatever pus lives within. You sputter, trying to wipe it away on instinct.

“Stop!” someone shouts, rushing up to you with some kind of towel or something. You can’t see. Whatever you’re coated in has begun to seep into your eyes. Finally, they’re able to mostly clear it away.

“Did any of it get in your mouth?” the doctor from earlier asks. You blink at him, still holding the brain.

“I-I don’t know,” you say. Your limbs are rigid, locked in place in panic and fear. “I don’t know,”

“Goddamnit,” he says, wrenching the brain from your hands.

In an instant, you’re being stripped of your gloves and coat and shoved into a plastic room. You can’t even discern one moment from the next.

“What the hell is going on?” you shout. The doctor looks at you sympathetically.

“Until we can be sure that you aren’t infected, you have to stay here,” he says. You blink at him.

“And if I am?” you ask. His eyes darken.

“Then only God can help you,”

No, no, no. This can’t be happening. Fear locks its hands around your throat. Your hands find your hair, pulling aimlessly at the strands as your panic begins to take over. You can feel your breathing quicken, your chest heaving. You’ve cheated death so many times, so many infections and cases that you’ve successfully avoided. And for what? You feel like that whale on the beach, the one that was still fighting. It was waiting for death. It was waiting for the sea to reclaim its body. You feel like you can feel the tide at your ankles now.

It feels like there’s a hole in your chest. You go through the motions, not paying attention to much else. It feels good to throw yourself into your work. There’s nothing else keeping you steady anymore. The sting of rejection hangs heavy on your skin, it’s all you can think about. Does Leon know? Does he know that you want to know him as intimately as you know guts and sinew? Does he know how bad it hurts to know that he won’t let you?

“You’re being dramatic,” Rebecca says. You look at her through your lashes over the files you’re examining. “I’m sure it wasn’t that bad,”

You sigh. No, perhaps it wasn’t. “I don’t know,”

Rebecca frowns, contorting her soft features into some kind of sympathy, and leaves you to your sorrow.

Your apartment is so empty when you return to it. It’s always been this way, but it somehow feels worse now. Before your trip to New York, you’d had something to hope for. You felt a bit brighter. Now, you feel as empty as the living room of your place. It’s too cold here.

You collect your forgotten glass from last night. There’s a bit of liquor still loose in the bottom. You wash it out in the sink and place the glass on the counter. You feel like crying.

Everything is too much. The case that is no longer yours lives in your brain, Leon’s rejection weighs down your bones, and you feel more alone than you have in months.

You don’t even realize you’re crying until the salty taste runs over your lips. Tears claw at your throat, feeling like barbed wire scratching at your insides. You try to blink them away, but it just makes their assault worse. With a sigh, you sink to the floor. You feel pathetic, crying on your kitchen linoleum. There's nothing worse than crying alone in a place not meant for tears. You breathe in deeply, feeling empty with each intake. You put your head in your hands.

It’s then that your phone rings. With a groan, you stand, snagging the phone from where it rests on the counter. You flip it open with one hand.

“Hello?” you ask, sniffing aggressively in order to maintain some sort of composure.

“You okay?” Rebecca’s voice, soft and delicate, drifts into your ear from the speaker.

“Yeah,” you lie. “Place is real dusty, made the mistake of kicking it all up,”

With a small laugh, Rebecca continues. “I just wanted to remind you of the gala tomorrow night. The whole team is going, which includes you, so wear something nice,”

You roll your eyes. “I think I’ll sit this one out. Those places make me anxious anyway,”

“No way,” Rebecca says. “You have to come. You’re, like, the guest of honor,”

You frown deeply, scrunching your features together in what looks like a wince. A gala is the last thing you need right now. It really sounds like your worst nightmare.

“He’ll be there,” Rebecca says. You frown more.

“Is that supposed to convince me to come?” you ask, picking at a piece of the counter that’s peeling up.

“When’s the last time you saw him?”

“Probably a month ago,” you say, pursing your lips. “Haven’t seen him since we got back from New York,”

“Yikes,” Rebecca says. You roll your eyes. She doesn’t know the half of it. “Just wear something nice, okay? I expect to see you decked out in all your best jewels,”

“Right, because I’m known for those,” you joke.

She bids you goodbye, and you stare at the shadows on your floor cast by your body in the light of the rangehood. You don’t even know what you would say to Leon. An apology doesn’t seem quite right, neither does pretending nothing ever happened. If anything, you’re sort of hoping he ignores you completely. That would be much easier than pretending to enjoy small talk.

With a groan, you take yourself to bed. This is something you can think about in the morning.

The sunlight does not shed any new perspective on the situation. You’re hopelessly staring at your closest, running through your options of what to wear.

“This is childish,” you mumble to no one in particular, and thread through your clothes to find a simple button down and pleated pants. They will have to do.

You dress quickly. You’re stuffing your shirt into your pants when a button pops off. It lands with a clang against your mirror. You groan, a long, drawn out sound that releases some of your tension. Why can’t anything go right for you on days like this? You reach down to pick up the fallen button, choosing to discard it on your nightstand. Maybe you could figure out how to sew it back on. It can’t be much different than sewing up a wound, right?

The taxi ride to the banquet hall is silent, save for the staticky noise of the radio. The cabbie doesn’t speak, and you prefer it that way. There’s not much for you to say anyway, at least in terms of small talk. You’re not exactly keen on sharing your pathetic situation either. So you remain silent until you pull up to the building. Checking your pockets for your necessities, you push out of the cab. It’s starting to drizzle, so you hurry inside.

You find Rebecca quickly, wearing a beautiful tan dress that hugs her figure well. You suddenly feel frumpy. The cuffs of your sleeves are fraying, your shoes are a size too small, and your pants barely brush the tops of your feet. Maybe you should’ve just stayed home.

“You made it!” Rebecca cheers, shoving a glass of champagne into your hand. “I wasn’t entirely sure you would,”

You force a smile, and say, “Me neither,”

She grins at you, threading her arm through yours. She drags you amongst the other guests, greeting the ones she knows and introducing herself to the ones she doesn’t. You admire her ability to fit into any space. There’s no evidence to suggest that she has ever seen horror, no clues that point to sorrow running in her veins. You cannot say the same for yourself. You’re fidgety, uncomfortable, and try your best not to speak to others. Your eyes shift across the ballroom, looking at the hundreds of heads that are crammed into the space. It makes you frown.

“Doing okay?” Rebecca asks. You nod. “We can find somewhere to sit?”

“You keep mingling,” you say, pulling your arm free from her. “Come find me when it gets boring,”

She flashes you a smile that has lingering worry, and lets you drift into the crowd. This is the last place you want to be, and she knows it. You find an empty table near a big window. The curtains are drawn back, and you can see the rain beginning to pelt down onto the courtyard outside. You’re not sure how long you watch the rain fall, casually sipping your champagne. The screech of a chair being pulled out beside you draws you back to reality.

Leon looks handsome, albeit uncomfortable, in his pressed suit. He fidgets with the cuffs of his jacket as he sits, pointedly avoiding eye contact with you. You swallow hard.

“You looked lonely,” he says, adjusting in his chair. “Figured you could use some company,”

“I appreciate the kindness,” you say, setting your glass onto the table. He finally levels his gaze on you, and a chill snakes down your spine. “I’m alright, though,”

“Maybe I just wanted an excuse to get away from the crowd,” he says, half smiling. 

You’re not sure what to say, so you don’t say anything. You turn your gaze back to the throng of people casually conversing like nothing bad has ever happened. The thought makes you frown. Of all the horrors and devastation you’ve seen, this has got to be the worst. People mingling and drinking like others aren’t dying a few states away.

“Weird, isn’t it?” Leon’s voice pulls you back to him. It’s a bit gruff and worn, like he’s been talking all night. Maybe he has. “Seeing people dance and laugh and be so care free?”

You nod. “They have no idea what’s out there,”

“No, they don’t,” he says, trailing his eyes over your crossed legs. “Maybe it’s better that way,”

“Maybe,” you muse, reaching for your glass again. It was half full before Leon sat down; it’s now almost completely empty. Your mouth feels dry.

“How’ve you been?” Leon asks, leaning forward, forearms on his knees. You watch him carefully, like he’s hiding something.

“Fine,” you say. You’re not sure why the words come out so clipped. You can’t find it in yourself to be sorry, though. He wants arm’s length? That’s what you’ll give him. “You?”

He frowns. “I’m alright. Just haven’t heard from you,”

“Didn’t know you wanted to,” you say. The lines around his mouth deepen, and you want to kiss them away.

“Are we back to this, then?” he asks. You feel his gaze on every inch of your skin. You feel suddenly exposed, raw. You frown.

“This is what you wanted, isn’t it?” you ask, swallowing. “Easier that way,”

You’re not sure why you throw the words back in his face, but you don’t exactly regret it. He watches you like he’s studying you.

“Is that what you want?” he asks, voice low and delicate, like he’s treading uncharted waters. You suppose that’s exactly what he’s doing.

You frown. “You said it. Not me,”

“But is that what you want?”

You don’t know. You want him to give you more than surface level. You want him to be open with you. You want him to laugh at your jokes, and sit on your couch, and help you cook dinner. You want him to know you.

“I don’t know, Leon,” you say. Something sparks in his eyes, an emotion you can’t quite place.

He’s silent for a while before asking, “What’s your sister’s name?”

You gape at him. “Angela,”

“Did you like having a sibling growing up?” he asks, scooting his chair a few inches closer.

You smile a bit. “Sometimes. Other times, I wanted her to disappear. Y’know, sibling quarrel and all that,”

“I don’t, actually,” he says. You furrow your brow. “I didn’t have any siblings,”

“Oh,” you say, because there’s not much else you can say. “You’re welcome to have mine, if you like,”

He laughs then, bright and wide. “I think I’m alright. I’ve learned to like being alone,”

“What did you do?” you ask. “Before everything, I mean,”

He contemplates your question for a moment, like he’s deciding if he wants to share pieces of himself with you. “I was a cop,”

“Noble,” you say, smiling. “That tracks,”

“What did you do?”

“Nothing,” you say, sighing. “Was training to be an EMT, but…things got in the way, and now I’m here,”

“So you’ve always been interested in medicine?” he asks. You nod. “Did you ever want to be a doctor?”

“No,” you say. “Wanted to be in the thick of it. Saving lives, and all that,”

He grins. “Bet you regret that a bit now,”

You shrug. “Sometimes. I like my job,”

“Even when it’s hard?”

“Even when it’s hard,”

He’s silent then. You watch him watch you. Something shifts in the tension between you, and you relax into your chair a bit more. There’s no one else in the room, no music playing, nothing. Just you and Leon, trying your hands at getting to know someone. You’re not sure you know how to be vulnerable like this anymore, not after everything. Visions of blood caked under your fingernails and memories of the screams of the damned make knowing another person challenging.

“What’s your favorite color?” you ask. He grins at you like a child.

“Green,” he says. You nod. “Yours?”

“I like a good burgundy,” you say. He rolls his eyes playfully. “Or maroon,”

“Are those not the same thing?”

You laugh. “Not even close. Burgundy is more brown, maroon is more of a reddish purple,”

“Right, my bad,” he says, smiling.

The hole in your chest begins to close. This feels like an olive branch. You want to pull him into your orbit, feel him on every inch of your skin. You want him to consume you. You’re almost positive that he would.

“Come dance with me,” he says. You almost drop your jaw at the suggestion.

“Who are you and what have you done with Leon?” you tease, wringing your hands together. You want to take him up on the offer, more than you think you know, but it doesn’t seem like something he would do. You’re almost worried that this is some cruel ploy.

He laughs. “We can do something normal for once. No harm in it,”

You nod, standing to follow him into the crowd of other couples. His hand is steadfast on your waist, the other gently clasping one of your own. You feel stiff as he leads.

“Loosen up,” he says, leaning further into you. Your throat feels like it closes up.

“I’m loose,” you lie. He grins at you, perfectly soft lips pulling around his stupidly white teeth. God, you want to kiss him.

You decide then that you don’t want easy. You don’t want to keep him at an arm’s length, and you’ll do anything to convince him he doesn’t want it either. You want him, wholly and vulnerable, completely. You want him to look out for you. You want to do mundane, domestic things with him. You want to cut his hair because the barber never gets it right. You want to walk into the kitchen and see him doing the dishes, not because you asked but because he wanted to clean up your conjoined space. You want to fold laundry with him.

You’ve never wanted this way, or this much. Before, you’d been so content to let him be cold and detached, to throw yourself into your work and live alone. Now, you’re not happy with that. And you think he knows that too.

“You look nice tonight,” he says, voice low and gentle. It washes over you in a wave, settling your bones and warming your blood.

“Careful,” you tease, smiling. “I might think you’ve gone soft on me,”

“I think you knew that already,” he says. “This is the part where you tell me that I look nice too,”

He does look nice. You knew that already. His suit is almost all black, save for the cuff links that shine against the lights of the ballroom. He looks more than nice. He looks perfect, collected.

“Well, now you’ve gone too far,” you say, grinning so wide that your cheeks hurt. He rolls his eyes. “You do look nice, though,”

When the music fades out, he doesn’t let go. You don’t want him to anyway. You want to stay here, like this, forever. You want him to keep holding you until you’re both no more than dust. He drums a rhythm on your side with his fingers, and a shiver runs through you.

“Take a walk with me,” he says, almost bumping his nose with yours when he leans in to look at you. He’s a hair’s width away, and if you leaned in a touch, you’d be kissing him. You wonder what would happen if you did.

“Okay,” you say.

He leads you out of the crowd by your hand, which you can feel the beads of sweat beginning to form upon. You catch Rebecca’s eye as you move through the crowd. She gives you a wide smile and a subtle thumbs up, which you scowl at. It’s raining hard when you exit the ballroom. You can barely see the cars on the street ahead of you through the thick sheet of water coming down.

“Still want to take that walk?” you ask, looking up at Leon. He’s still holding your hand. He grins at you.

“Afraid you’ll melt?” he returns. You laugh. He gives your hand a squeeze. “Just for a bit,”

You’re soaked to the bone two minutes after you step into the shower. Your clothes stick to every inch of your skin and a cold wind blows, threatening to freeze the very marrow within your body. You won’t let it, not when Leon is looking at you the way he is, cheeks tinged pink from laughter and smiling so wide that you can see your reflection in his teeth.

He never once lets go of your hand as he leads you down the sidewalk. You’re silent, but it’s not uncomfortable. A car whizzes by, nearly splashing you, but Leon pulls you into him and covers your body with his. You catch a whiff of whatever fancy cologne he’s wearing, and you almost feel drunk on it. Maybe it’s the champagne you’d been sipping, but you’re not sure. He keeps you within reach, just in case another car attempts to sour your evening, he says.

“Why do you never call me by my name?” he asks suddenly, looking at you through stringy and soaked hair.

You shrug. “Everyone calls you by your name,” you say. “That’s also not entirely true. I only call you ‘Kennedy’ sometimes,”

“Only when you’re mad at me,” he says, grinning. “Which is often,”

“Well,” you say, returning the wattage of his smile. “There’s your answer,”

You stare at him for a moment, taking in the sheer beauty of his person. Before, you’d thought he was all hard edges and crisp lines. That he would cut you if you got too close. Now, though, in this moment and this lighting, he is the softest thing you’ve ever seen. Round cheekbones, soft lips, gentle features that are perfectly symmetrical. He has a few freckles dotted across his cheeks, smile lines that make his eyes crinkle. A hairline scar that extends across his right cheek. Without thinking, you reach out, smoothing your fingertips over it. It’s not that deep, barely snagging on the ridges of your fingerprints. You hear a breath hitch in his throat at the movement.

“Sorry,” you say, retracting your hand. “I didn’t mean to do that,”

“It’s okay,” he says, voice barely above a whisper. His eyes scan your face, lashes fluttering against the assault of the rain. He returns the gentle gesture by pushing a few wet strands of hair out of your eyes. His touch is ghostly, barely there.

“I never thanked you,” you say. He furrows his brows. “For staying with me that night. It…it really helped me,”

“You needed me,” he says. “Did you know that you snore?”

You bark a laugh that you can’t stop from bubbling over the surface. “I do not,”

He grins. “You totally do. It’s almost scary. I didn’t know a person could make that kind of noise,”

“You’re so mean,” you say, frowning. “You really know how to flatter someone,”

He rolls his eyes. “C’mon, let’s go. I need out of these clothes,”

He leads you down a few winding streets, making turns that seem random. It dawns on you then that he’s bringing you back to his apartment. Your heart leaps into your throat, clogging up your breath and your functioning. Your brain is swimming. You’re going to see how he lives, what his life looks like outside of work. He’s letting you.

He only drops your hand to get the door open. The lock jams, which you can’t help but laugh at, and then he’s finally letting you into his space.

His apartment is almost bare, similar to yours. White walls wrap the space, a few items dotted around on tables. He doesn’t own a television, you note. There’s a wall of shelves, though, filled pretty decently with books. You didn’t take him for a reader, but you suppose it makes sense. You toe your shoes off near the door, soaked clothes dripping onto the hardwood floor beneath you.

“Sorry about the mess,” you say, looking up at him. He shrugs.

“Better rain water than something else,” he says. You smile.

You follow him to his room, watching the way he begins to loosen in the space. Regardless of the lack of personality, this place is his home. It’s where he feels most comfortable, most him. And he let you into it. He digs through a tattered dresser that has likely seen many homes, turning only to haphazardly chuck an old shirt at you. You barely catch it, letting out a huff of air at the impact. He follows it with a pair of shorts.

“You’re welcome to shower,” he says, tugging off his sopping suit jacket. He begins working on the buttons of his shirt next, and you almost let your jaw drop.

“I think I’m done with water for a few hours,” you say, cheeks growing warm. He’s halfway to his navel when you excuse yourself to the bathroom. You guess on which door it is and push into it, closing it behind you. You catch your breath.

You feel giddy. You can’t help the childish smile that creeps onto your lips.You change quickly, catching a glimpse of yourself in the mirror.

You look frumpy, but very comfortable. You wonder what you’ll do next. Maybe he’ll just call you a cab and send you home. You pray to whoever is listening that that isn’t the case. With a heavy exhale, you leave the bathroom.

“Just leave your clothes in there,” Leon hollers from his bedroom. “I’ll deal with it tomorrow,”

You nod, following his voice. He’s clad in a sweatshirt that is a bit too big on him and a pair of sweatpants. He looks so human. You take a moment to look around the room. Where he didn’t have a television in his living room, he does have one in here. You think that’s odd. There’s a VHS player balanced precariously on top of a few books, wires running across the floor to connect to the television on a table. You wonder if this is where he spends most of his time. He leans over the VHS player, popping a tape into its mouth. Then, he settles into his bed.

You’re standing in the doorway, wearing his clothes, watching him get comfortable in his bed. You feel like some weird stalker or voyeur. It makes the tips of your ears burn.

“You can come sit, y’know,” Leon says, grinning at you. Something shifts in his gaze; he must see the turmoil on your face. “Or I can call you a cab,”

You shake your head, moving to join him. He leaves plenty of space between you–always the gentleman. You don’t recognize the movie playing on the screen, but you watch it anyway, focus so trained on it to prevent you from staring at Leon. The film drones on even though you’re not really paying attention. Leon shifts beside you, arm brushing against yours. You almost stop breathing. You feel silly for feeling this way; childish, weak, vulnerable. You wish you could be more nonchalant, more like your peers. But you don’t know how to be like that anymore. You only know quick action and timidness. You only know how to hide vulnerability for the sake of keeping people from asking if you know what you’re doing. You only know how to be closed off in the hopes that people won’t ask you how you are.

Because you know the answer. You know that if someone asks, you might unload on them. You might tell them how much you miss your family, how hard it is to dig through bodies and pull out their most valuable pieces. You might tell them how much you miss home, how much you regret taking a job in Raccoon City, how much you wish you’d stayed in school, how much you wish you could hold your nieces. 

As you think about it, you begin to cry. You’re not even sure why. It’s after a particularly unbecoming sniffle that Leon shifts his focus to you. You feel very embarrassed, trying in earnest to not let him see you cry.

“I’m sorry,” you say, wiping at your eyes with your wrinkled palms. “Sometimes I get lost in my brain, and it makes me cry,”

He shifts a bit closer to you, placing a gentle hand on your shoulder. His fingers move in circular motions, and you can’t deny how much calmer it makes you feel.

“Talk to me,” he says, almost whispering. You look him in the eye then, and you see the sincerity in his gaze. “I want to listen,”

You sniffle again. “I thought it was easier to be mean to me,”

“I don’t want easy,” he says. You gnaw on your lower lip. “I’m sorry I said that,”

“I don’t want easy, either,” you say. He grins at you then, full and wide, and bright enough to blind you. You wonder if this is the moment you’ve been waiting for. You wonder if he’s finally going to kiss you and get it over with.

“Can I be honest?” he asks. His voice is so soft, so calming, you wonder how you never noticed it before. You nod. “I thought, for a while at least, that if I was just rude enough to you, you would stop following me on missions. I thought that if you couldn’t stand to be around me, you wouldn’t, and you wouldn’t follow me into the jaws of death. Obviously, that didn’t work. That day that you stitched me up? It all hit me. I just…don’t know how to be the man you deserve yet,”

You smile, face warm and light, insides gooey and sticky. “I saw you as a challenge. I would continue to work with you out of spite,”

He rolls his eyes. “I know that now,”

“My turn for honesty,” you say, voice shaking a bit. “I was…in Raccoon City. When everything happened, I mean. I saw it first hand. It’s the reason I am where I am. I was training to be an EMT there, had some friends I’d been staying with. That’s why I get so…weird when I have to do my job. It’s why everything is so hard,”

He nods as he listens. “That must have been hard,” he says. You nod.

“It was devastating,” you say, breathless. “If I was shy before–which I was, mind you–I was a recluse after. It’s why I don’t go out, why I don’t like groups of people, why I have such a hard time being vulnerable,”

“I know what that’s like,” he says. You feel like your heart cracks open, beckoning him inside.

“You make me want to learn how,” you say, trying your hardest not to look away from him. “You make me want to learn how to be vulnerable, how to be open. I’ve told you things even Rebecca doesn’t know about me. I just…struggle with it sometimes,”

He’s silent as he watches you, and you worry that you’ve said the wrong thing. Maybe he just wants to be friends, have an extra shoulder around for when things get to be too much. Maybe you’ve read every situation, every interaction completely wrong. You don’t really know what you’re doing, after all. Maybe your naivety clouded your judgment.

It’s then that he does kiss you. It’s soft and pliant, warming you to your very core. Your hands shift to hold him better, fingers curling around the collar of his sweatshirt to pull him impossibly closer. You melt into him, letting him set little fires across every inch of skin he consumes. You want him to devour you whole. One of his hands finds the back of your head, tilting you ever so slightly to give him better access to you. You give it up without a second thought, a small gasp escaping you as your tongue meets his. In this moment, nothing else exists. The movie playing on the television is drowned out by your bliss, the deafening roar of blood in your ears settles to a beautiful hum. It feels like the crest of a wave splashing back down into the ocean, like a symphony crescendoing. You could die here, wrapped in his warmth and his kisses, and be happy.

When he pulls away, breathless and kiss swollen and reddened, you want to sink back into him. You find it cruel that he would pull away from you, leave you cold where you were so warm before.

“Keep being vulnerable with me,” he says, breath uneven and stuttering. “Please don’t ever stop,”